How much TK/STR does it take...

[Ninja-Bear]

Hey Wonder Woman in the old tv series stopped a plane taxiing. Iirc held the wing and made it turn in circles.

[mrinku]

Is that in the RAW? Where does it say that TK must, by default, obey Newtonian laws of kinematics? For all you know, my TK is defined (the SFX) as manipulating microgravity around the subject in such a way as to control it however I please. Or maybe it's "magic" and it just, you know, works.

 

In this case, I'm pretty sure Phil was just talking about normal STR, not the TK angle. If The Thing grabs hold of a HYDRA chopper and is lifted into the air he has several options, but using his STR to oppose its movement isn't one of them.

 

TK specifically has no action/reaction between character and target. You'd be able to oppose Flight directly with it.

[zslane]

Ah, but the "TK angle" is the whole gist of this thread...

[Greywind]

Hey Wonder Woman in the old tv series stopped a plane taxiing. Iirc held the wing and made it turn in circles.

 

Sasquatch threw a plane backwards against the full thrust of the engines in his first appearance.

[Greywind]

 Lifting the driving wheels (the back two, assuming a 2-wheel drive vehicle)

 

I will see you and raise you a front-wheel drive...

[mrinku]

Sasquatch threw a plane backwards against the full thrust of the engines in his first appearance.

 

Being a slightly lower than Hulk level brick that was probably casual STR

 

He also masses a LOT more than your average super (about 2000 pounds according to various sources, though others say 2 tons). Sasquatch or the Hulk probably *could* stop a helicopter or light aircraft from taking off just by grabbbing it and overloading its payload capacity. 

 

In the case of Wonder Woman, if the plane was still travelling under stall speed (likely) I can get behind her grabbing one wing and opposing its thrust tangentially by digging her feet in. Depending on the WW build and era, that may also have been within her casual STR.

[Tjack]

If you're saying that a car won't move with only three wheels, well I've seen it done.

True 'dat. A car with three functioning wheels and one corner digging itself into the pavement will move, depending on which corner and whether it's a 2 or 4 wheel drive; but it will not be moving fast or inconspicuously.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Picking up the car seems like the obvious choice, but the truth is, some cars have significantly less torque (in-game strength) than they do weight.  A limousine, especially an armor plated one, will weigh huge amounts but not have a lot of strength to move around with for example.  Just grabbing it and keeping it from driving away will be easier than picking it up.  Plus, a car that peels out but goes no where makes a lot of noise but isn't particularly shocking.  A car that floats in the air gets a lot more attention.  So you might have good reason to not want to lift it.  And its kinda cool to go up to a car and keep it from driving off by main strength, too.

[mrinku]

Totally off topic, I was once a passenger in a VW Beetle (old style) when one of the rear wheels came off at highway speeds. Fortunately this happened on a safe, straight stretch of road with no other traffic around.

 

We went about 500 metres before stopping and there was a perfect, parallel to the road edge gouge in the bitumen all the way. I have a photo but it's in storage somewhere and not digitised. 

[g3taso]

You are not fighting the power of the engine. You are fighting the fraction of that engine's power that friction can apply through the wheels against the asphalt.

[mrinku]

...of that fraction of a jet engine's power it can exert through its turbines. Change Environment (lower air pressure) would slow down a jet, too.

 

Your point is a bit academic since that's the ONLY level of power that matters in a normal wheeled vehicle.

[PhilFleischmann]

Likewise, you could stop a car with a wall or a tree or a telephone pole or a lamppost, or something else sufficiently strong and anchored to the ground.  And you don't necessarily even have to ram the car into it.  If a car's front bumper is touching a brick wall, and then you floor the gas pedal, it probably won't move or do much damage to either the wall or the car, because it hasn't built up any momentum.  You'll wear down the tires only.

 

I guess this is how TK is supposed to work - it has no momentum.

 

This is why TK is and remains in the realm of sci-fi, fantasy, and comic books.

[Ninja-Bear]

True 'dat. A car with three functioning wheels and one corner digging itself into the pavement will move, depending on which corner and whether it's a 2 or 4 wheel drive; but it will not be moving fast or inconspicuously.

Oh a friend and I wonder where all these sparks were in the night then he passed us.

[mrinku]

Likewise, you could stop a car with a wall or a tree or a telephone pole or a lamppost, or something else sufficiently strong and anchored to the ground.  And you don't necessarily even have to ram the car into it.  If a car's front bumper is touching a brick wall, and then you floor the gas pedal, it probably won't move or do much damage to either the wall or the car, because it hasn't built up any momentum.  You'll wear down the tires only.

 

I guess this is how TK is supposed to work - it has no momentum.

 

This is why TK is and remains in the realm of sci-fi, fantasy, and comic books.

 

Well, it does depend a little on special effects and modifiers. The TK rule is that there's no action/reaction between the character and the target, but that doesn't actually mean there isn't some between the target and something else. Probably the most realistic TK would involve drones... there IS action/reaction between the drones and the target, but not the operator (character).

 

But yeah. Usually it's your Doc Smith inertialess drive thing.

 

On a physics tangent, when the wheel came off that Bug, I had the unusual sight of watching the damn thing overtake us, as it continued in the same direction as us, but with less deceleration than the car

[DasBroot]

Hey Wonder Woman in the old tv series stopped a plane taxiing. Iirc held the wing and made it turn in circles.

 

Most of these feats of strength make perfect sense in Champions with the addition of 1 little power:

 

Clinging (10 points for character's strength I believe).

 

Now the character is strong enough to hold the plane by a wing, strong enough to hold the ground, and the ground is strong enough to hold the plane.

 

It also fixes lifting up things like iron beams, cars, and busses - things that a hero is strong enough to lift by one end and swing like a bat (and are things that are tough enough to survive being picked up by one end) but logically can't even consider because they weigh so much more than the hero that the far end will fall, strength be damned (hand waved in most games as a genre convention).

 

You can even buy it with 'only works on horizontal surfaces' if you don't want to use it to grapple or climb walls, and it even throws in an extra dice of protection  when calculating knockback.

 

Clinging. It's not just for wall crawlers.

[Christopher R Taylor]

In comic books, physics tends to take a break.  Catching someone who is falling doesn't save them any more than them hitting the ground, but Superman can do it.  Sure, there's no way Superman can have leverage to do some of the stuff he does, but he's got super strength so it works.  You just don't sweat that kind of stuff.  I mean, you're willing to accept that a man can lift an ocean trawler and fly around with it, but not accept that he can stop a plane?

[dsatow]

Just one more simple note.  Under RaW, (I would rule otherwise and allow the vehicle to break free given a sufficient roll) I believe an entangle will stop the vehicle cold, regardless of movement velocity.

[mrinku]

...unless special effects or modifiers still allow the target to keep moving. And entangling a target won't stop it falling - in fact it can often start it falling if it shuts down Flight   But yeah, in some cases that effect needs extra attention.

 

If the entangle definitely does affect the movement it's largely a judgement call. At normal combat speeds it's probably simplest to run RAW. For fliers who have definitely retained their movement velocity, you should probably give them a compulsory deceleration at some appropriate rate (NOT 5m per metre - that's meant to be full reverse thust) - maybe 1m per metre?

 

For ground hugging targets, friction is going to slow them down a lot faster, and depending on the Entangle maybe even faster than if the foot was simply taken off the accelerator. However, I'd usually allow noncombat speed targets to get some kind of breakout roll. Maybe use the Strength and Movement rules, letting the residual movement add to STR at some rate.

 

On the other hand, it could be potentially handled just by the roll to escape the Entangle on the ground vehicle's next movement phase. If they manage double remaining BODY and get a full move you might allow them to retain some of the residual (especially if they exceed the BODY by a lot).

[dsatow]

It really depends on the special effect, but RaW basically says

Typically an Entangle completely immobilizes a

character, making it impossible for him to move

or use any Movement Powers except Teleportation,

but the exact effects depend on the special

effects of the Entangle and Movement Power.

So a entangle defined as a telekinetic hold could be used.  For most ground vehicles, an 11Def 1 Body entangle should hold the vehicle in place(most normal vehicles are about 25-45 STR).  RaW could declare the wheels being frozen in place as limbs to only allowing the STR of the vehicle for movement.  

[mrinku]

11 DEF is some pretty serious Entangle active points, though. Extra PD or ED can't exceed twice the base dice, so the minimum there is a 6d6 entangle (60pts), and +5 PD (12pts). Even if you make it 1 BODY, that's just a Limitation and you may have troubles getting a 72 active point power approved.

[DasBroot]

At the same time to cold stop a vehicle travelling 24 m by the rules you'd have to have 24m/2 * 5 str per 2 meters = 60 str.

 

That's not 72 but it's the same as the base entangle ... and the entangle is ranged and doesn't care if the target is going 24, 30, 50, or 1000 unlike str (which is good for something going up to 28 m/phase at 72 points) so should cost more.

[dsatow]

11 DEF is some pretty serious Entangle active points, though. Extra PD or ED can't exceed twice the base dice, so the minimum there is a 6d6 entangle (60pts), and +5 PD (12pts). Even if you make it 1 BODY, that's just a Limitation and you may have troubles getting a 72 active point power approved.

If allowed by GM approval per the rules, but a 6def 6 Body entangle is just as good.  Its just the single body allows the sudden snap and burst of acceleration while having a greater amount of body means that the vehicle would loose half a phase (and those have a slower start).